How To Start Building A Gravel Driveway

When building your very own driveway, it is quite possible to cut corners while building it so that you don’t have to carry the high costs that could arise. However, a driveway that has been made to standards usually has 3 layers in it. The lowest is about 6 inches thick and is crushed rock. The middle layer consists of smaller stones that are about 2 inches in diameter, and the third layer is the actual gravel. A lot of people try to have smoother stones on the top layer, but this isn’t the best option. Having irregular, angular stones on the top part of the driveway allow for much better traction.

Mark the Path You Want to Take A gravel driveway is a form of surface stablisation systems. It is used to reduce the incidence of muddy driveways during wet weather. To start building one in your home, you are going to need to define the path first. You can’t build without drawing an outline of the driveway on the ground. Do this by driving landscaping stakes into the ground at points and using string stretched between them to build yourself an outlines. Then, you are going to do more than a little work to start. You have to take off all grass and the top layer of soil from the area that was marked. You can always hire manual labor to do this for you.

Calculate the Stone Volume and Get it Delivered!After the path has been cleared, you are ready to start putting in your new surface stabilisation system of crushed rock and gravel. While there are more effective technologies out there, old school is the way a lot of people want to go. First, you have to think about the volume of rock you are going to need. You can do this by using basic mathematics to determine the number of cubic yards your driveway is going to occupy. With this in mind, you can think about the actual amount of stone you need. If you are having trouble doing this on your own, there is no shame in hiring a professional either!

Getting all that stone delivered to your home is going to be a task in and of itself. Some trucks that deliver gravel can actually spread the stones in your pathway as well so that you don’t have to do this manually. Don’t get all the different types of stone delivered once. Spread it out so that you can do each layer properly before getting the next shipment.